The worm continues to turn.
Guardian: 'Ladies Night' Discount Axed in N.J. Bars
The state's top civil rights official has ruled that taverns cannot offer discounts to women on "ladies nights,'' agreeing with a man who claimed such gender-based promotions discriminated against men.David R. Gillespie said it was not fair for women to get into the Coastline nightclub for free and receive discounted drinks while men paid a $5 cover charge and full price for drinks.
In his ruling Tuesday, J. Frank Vespa-Papaleo, director of the state Division on Civil Rights, rejected arguments by the nightclub that ladies nights were a legitimate promotion. Commercial interests do not override the "important social policy objective of eradicating discrimination,'' he ruled.
The ruling specifically addressed the weekly ladies nights at the Coastline in Cherry Hill, but it carries the force of a court decision and applies statewide. Vespa-Papaleo said state officials would write formal rules after a public hearing.
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
Bad Discrimination is characterized by people acting violently towards other people on the grounds that those other people are somehow lesser than themselves. Groups like the KKK, various radical Islamists, and such are Bad Discriminators. Now, their crime isn't that they discriminate against women, homosexuals, Jews, or Blacks but that they act aggressively towards them. Their reasons are irrational and that's what makes their motives so hard for the rest of us to understand. Their actions are rightly condemned for they are based on nonsensical logic and immoral action.
Good Discrimination is characterized by people deciding among many non-violent options of action. That sounds unduly broad, but it must be. For if humans are to prosper and progress to greater levels of living, we must choose the best alternative among many, throughout our lives. I have to decide if I want to hang out with friends or continue reading Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics by George Reisman. I discriminate between one activity that might provide a few hours of entertainment and one activity that might further expand my set of knowledge. The option I pick will be the one that I consider to have the greater value. Furthermore, if I choose to leave time for friends, I have to decide which friends to visit with. I must discriminate among the group of friends based in Austin, the group in New Braunfels, or the groups elsewhere. Humans aren't capable of doing everything they want at once and our resources are scarce. Hence, we discriminate.
The same goes for businesses. Bars and clubs, like every other enterprise, live and die by the revenue they earn and any profits made. Given the nature of their customer base, most bar owners and club owners want to attract beautiful women to their establishments. The market has repeatedly demonstrated having those female crowds around generates greater revenue through increased alcohol sales and cover charges that men willingly pay in order to mingle with the extra women. There's the multiplier effect where increased foot traffic itself is a reason to stop by the night spot. If this weren't the case, bars wouldn't have these nights so often and wouldn't advertise them. If the specials didn't pay off, they wouldn't be offered.
These incentives deliberately discriminate against men because the incentives make economic sense. They aren't done in order to hurt men or insult them or make them feel inferior. Ask any male in a club during one of these promotions and he'll tell you the price is worth it; if it weren't so, he would be off somewhere else that had a cost-to-benefit calculus that he preferred.
"Ladies' Nights" are not Bad Discrimination. They do discriminate, but not in the commonly oVersused negative connotation that's been thrown about us for decades. Not all discrimination is bad; we must discriminate every day in order to survive and live.
UPDATE(7/22/2004 1:22pm)
News8Austin: Firefighter sues ESD 11
Last week, the former fire chief of the Southeast Travis County Fire District, Stephen Beran was charged with theft.Now, his mother, former firefighter Ann Beran, has filed an age discrimination suit against the department.
She was fired for being too old, she said, but her complaint is separate from her son's.
Copyright ©2004TWEAN News Channel of Austin, L.P. d.b.a. News 8 Austin
There are any number of good pragmatic reasons to fire someone who's old. But none of them trump my right to actively discriminate towards those who I want to work with and against those I don't.
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